Brief Description: Bastard canopy hinge pins take two
Went to visit a fellow builder Tim in his machine shop after work to do the final 3/8" hole reaming and installtion of the bushing. Pictures below show the results. When I installed the hinge pins I found that the skin gap between the forward skin and canopy skin were way off. I called Vans later in the evening and decided the best way to go was to find a welder to fill the holes and start over.
Called Tim Saturday morning and he helped me get the holes filled. I taped everthing down again and installed all the clecoes on both skins. Drilled the holes from the bottom this time to 1/4" as I had done before.
Istalled a temporary pin and checked the skin spacing. Again not what I had hoped for. The skin on the right side was flush together and the skin on the left side of the hinge was .008. This was take two and I had thought that all would be well.
I removed the pins and moved the skin back to where the gap (.032) was called for per the plans. I marked the holes where the hole needed to be moved to, I removed the skins and removed the canopy frame from the fuselage.
I decided to step drill the hole and made a drilling block from some 1" aluminum stock and sacrificed a drill bit and ground the point to flat. I lined up the hole to the sharpie line and drilled a larger offcenter hole to make the adnustment. I reinstalled the canopy on the frame and checked to make sure the distance was ok. Thankfully it was.
Next I enlarged the hole to slightly less than 3/*" and ireinstalled the bushing.
Next I clecoed the skin back on the frame and installed the hinge pins. The gap was absolutely perect except for the curved sides which were slightly smaller gap.
The entire time of doing this the second time took me from Friday evening to Saturday afternoon. About 5 hours in total. Now I know why people curse the canopy.
